Murder City Devils Reunite
For one day, Camden relinquishes "America's Most Dangerous City" title

What have members of the now-defunct Murder City Devils been up to since their final release, 2003's R.I.P.? No, they haven't escaped into total post-break-up oblivion, but they have played in Broadcast Oblivion (drummer Coady Willis, now also in Big Business and the Melvins), performed in bands with really long names (vocalist Spencer Moody, now in Triumph of Lethargy Skinned Alive to Death, and Smoke & Smoke), toured modestly with mice (guitarist Dann Gallucci, also in Triumph as well as A Gun Called Tension), created graphic art (guitarist Nate Manny), and prettily made graves (bassist Derek Fudesco).

Well, get ready, Devil-worshippers: it's time to clear away those empty bottles and heal those broken hearts, 'cause the quintessential Seattle punks are reuniting for one quintessentially Seattle event-- the Capitol Hill Block Party. The two-day fest, which celebrates music, art and progressive causes, takes place July 28-29. Besides MCD (who announced news of the reunion show on their MySpace page and appear to be soliciting ideas for "the perfect set list"), other hometown favorites will rock the Block, including: Pretty Girls Make Graves, Band of Horses, Schoolyard Heroes, Minus the Bear, and Big Business. Even more will be announced on June 15. Ah, summer.

But don't get too excited: the Murder City Devils maintain that this is a one-off event. And given how busy the band's members are, we believe them.

Video: Murder City Devils:

Panthers Guitarist Forms Cloudland Canyon

The Double's Jacob Morris, Turing Machine/the Juan MacLean drummer Jerry Fuchs, and Uhlhorn's wife, Kelly Winkler, all contribute to the record, which skips the mega-riff rock found on Panthers albums in favor of electronic noodling, synthesizer soundscapes, and post-rock detours. This Heat, Ash Ra Temple, and Tortoise are all cited as influences, if you know what we're saying.

Tracklist:

01 Opening / Ice of Rift
02 Clearlight Intry
03 Carolina Foxtail / Sea Chirp
04 Field Ghosts
05 Coastal Breathe
06 Holy Canyon (Vanquish)
07 Joyful Noise
08 Secondary Chanting
09 Summer Cloth
10 BrightBeijing

Next week, Cloudland Canyon will head to Chicago to team up with Robert Lowe, aka Lichens (he's also a member of 90 Day Men and has worked with TV on the Radio). In addition to recording together, Cloudland Canyon and Lichens will hit the road for a brief tour. Doesn't look like they're scheduled to play any forested areas, but maybe they should. Dates:

06-26 Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle *
06-28 Missoula, MT - The Raven
06-29 Seattle, WA - Sunset Tavern #
06-30 Portland, OR - Towne Lounge $
07-01 San Francisco, CA - Hemlock Tavern ^
07-02 Santa Cruz, CA - Blue Lagoon
07-03 San Diego, CA - Che Café %
07-04 Los Angeles, CA - Compact Space/4^th Party %@
07-06 Baltimore, MD - Talking Head &
07-07 Brooklyn, NY - Union Pool &!
07-08 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church &

* with Zs, Yearling
# with Sir Richard Bishop
$ with White Rainbow, Valet^ with Assemble Head in Sunburst Sound
% with Earthless
@ with No Age, Amps for Christ
& with UW Owl
! with Growing

Stream: Cloudland Canyon: "Clearlight Intry"

Tuxedomoon Return
New Album, New Suits, New Lunar Cycle

Tracklist:

01 Hurry up and Wait (Flying Sequence)
02 Effervescing in the Nether Sphere
03 Soup du Jour
04 Flying Again
05 Triptych
06 I'm Real Stupid
07 Airport Blues
08 Needles Prelude
09 Prometheus Bound

The Show Goes On:

10 Baron Brown
11 Jinx
12 Loneliness
13 Remote (Pralaya)
14 Dream Flight
15 More Flying
16 Vulcanic, Combustible
17 Mr. Comfort
18 Another Flight
19 Invocation Of
20 Carry on Circles

Stream: Tuxedomoon: "Soup du Jour"
Stream: Tuxedomoon: "Triptych"

Lisa Germano Preps Young God Debut

Singer/songerwriter Lisa Germano has been around for a long time. She played strings for John Mellencamp (!) in the late 80s and into the 90s, and toured and recorded with the Indigo Girls (!!), David Bowie, Simple Minds, Iggy Pop, and Sheryl Crow (!!!). She also put out several albums on both Capitol Records and 4AD, as well as collaborated with Giant Sand in the side project OP8. But this is (relatively) common knowledge. What's not so well-known, however, is that Lisa Germano can suck you into her dreams. Just ask ex-Swan/current Angel of Light Michael Gira.

"She seems to play violin, piano/keyboards, and guitar with equal authority," Gira claims. "As well as producing her own records with great imaginative effect-- the result is seductive and truly magical. No one sounds like her. You get the feeling you're walking through her dreams as you listen. The intensity of feeling in her singing is a little frightening sometimes-- it's like she's singing very close to your ear, leading you through her world. It's a place I very much enjoy visiting, and I hope you will too."

Does that sound a little creepy to anyone else? At any rate, Gira was impressed enough with Germano that his Young God label will release her new album, In the Maybe World, on July 18. This is Germano's first since 2003's Lullaby for Liquid Pig.

Tracklist:
01 The Day
02 Too Much Space
03 Moon in Hell
04 Golden Cities
05 Into Oblivion
06 In the Land of Fairies
07 Wire
08 In the Maybe World
09 Red Thread
10 Seed
11 Except for the Ghosts
12 After Monday

Germano appears on RockPaperScissors, the third album from composer/producer Michael Brook (Brian Eno, the Pogues), out July 18 on bigHelium/Canadian Rational. She sings a song called "Want".

Exclusive: Colin Meloy Talks New Decemberists Album

The title track, a three-part epic that "makes up the heart of the record" was inspired by a Chinese folktale Meloy discovered while working in a bookstore. "The folktale is about a peasant in, I assume, feudal Japan (I don't know when the folktale actually originated)," Meloy said. "He's walking in the woods one day and he finds a crane that is wounded, injured with an arrow in its wing. And he kindly removes the arrow and revives the crane; the crane flies off. A couple days later this woman appears at his door, and they fall in love and get married. But they're really poor, so she suggests that in order for them to make money she should weave cloth for them to sell at the market. She goes off into this room and closes the door and makes him swear never to peek in, and if he does then some terrible thing will happen. So each day she goes in and makes this beautiful cloth, and he sells it for a lot of money, but he never quite knows what's going on inside the room. Until one day his curiosity gets the better of him; he peeks in and sees that she is a crane in fact, and has been picking out her feathers and putting them into the cloth, and she's bleeding. So she sees that he's seen her; she turns back into a crane and flies away, and that's the end.

"I always thought that it would be a good idea for a song cycle, or at least a challenging one, and it proved to be that, I think. I first started thinking about that idea two or three years ago, and immediately started working on some stuff with it, but it never really came together. I was having a hard time piecing it together, until after the last record I really set my mind to it. 'The Crane Wife' isn't going to be the only multi-part song cycle on the album, though. There's also 'The Island', which is "in the 12-minute range" and "not so cohesive, story-wise," according to Meloy. "But it will nicely offset the linear narrative of "The Crane Wife". It's kind of a piece showcasing the rest of the band as well, which is exciting. We're starting to delve more into British folk, especially from the 60s and 70s. Like Shirley Collins and Ann Briggs and Fairport Convention and things like that. And it's really sort of come to a head in preparing for this record. So there's a lot of exploration about where British folk met prog in the early 70s, late 60s. So ["The Island"] is definitely heavily influenced by that era."

If all this talk of epic multi-part song cycles sounds suspiciously familiar, bringing to mind the band's 2004 eighteen-minute, five-part The Tain EP, well, there's a reason for that. "Half of [2005's] Picaresque, maybe even more than half, had already been written by the time The Tain came about," Meloy said, "So I almost feel like this record has more to do with The Tain than Picaresque was. Because most of the material had already been written. That often happens, you kind of skip generations. The influence of a certain record is always coming from two years prior."

The band has been holed up in Kung Fu Bakery studios in Portland, Oregon since mid-April, with Tucker Martine and Death Cab for Cutie's Chris Walla behind the controls; they hope to be finished by the end of June.

They're currently choosing between 22 new songs for the album. Those include "Yankee Bayonet", a "Civil War-era ghost love story" ("My particular fascinations, I guess you can't really get away from them-- wars and soldiers and ghosts, things like that") featuring an as-yet-undetermined female vocalist duetting with Meloy, as well as "The Perfect Crime Number Two". "The Perfect Crime Number One", which "was recorded live a couple days ago after an absinthe binge," probably won't make the cut.

"It's hard to totally say what the record is going to be like," Meloy said, "since we're still in the beginning stages of it, and especially since there's so many songs that need to be trimmed down into a record, it's hard to say what the shape of the record will be. But for the most part, it feels like it's going to be kind of strange. And there will be a few of the three- or four-minute pop numbers that will have the Decemberisty tint to them. But for the most part it feels like-- it's kind of cliché, but-- exploring new territory, which is exciting."

Vocalist/violinist Petra Haden, who has been touring with the band, has not joined the Decemberists in the studio. "Petra Haden is not involved, for a number of reasons," Meloy explained. "One being that she was just kind of taken on to be an extra musician for the Picaresque tour, and now we're done with that and working on new material. We still will absorb musicians on the road, but we wanted to wait and see what the material ended up like before we made any decisions."

The major label experience has been going smoothly so far. Meloy said, "We've had the Capitol Records A&R people come in, which is kind of terrifying because as long as I've been a fan of music, and been aware of the differences between independent labels and major labels, that infamous initial listening by the A&R people in which they frown and shake their heads and say they need to hear more singles, that was kind of terrifying to me.

"So they came in, and we had strategically put together the two obvious singles that were both short and kind of poppy and fit in with the Decemberists idiom and played them for them. And they liked them. And they asked what else we were doing, and then we started playing the long proggy song cycles, and that's when they got really excited. So it was kind of a positive bit of reinforcement, that they actually support the fact that we're moving in a relatively strange direction."

Meloy said that the band hopes to convey that strangeness with suitable stage presentation on the tour in support in the album, which will begin this fall. "It's going to be playing bigger places, and there's always bigger ticket prices at those places, so we really want to make an extra effort to make it a good show. The best that we could do is to offer a better show I guess. So there will be some funny stuff I'm sure, to be determined."

The Decemberists plan to lay low for most of the rest of the summer, with only three shows scheduled. And they are:

06-16 Telluride, CO - Telluride Bluegrass Festival
08-23 Seattle, WA - Woodland Park Zoo
08-26 Salem, OR - NRK Festival

As for Henry "Hank" Meloy, Colin's son with girlfriend Carson Ellis (aka the woman behind the Decemberists' awesome illustrations), Meloy reported that "He's doing really great, actually! Fantastic. Sleeping all the way through the night, which is awesome." Yes, indeed.

Gnarls Barkley Announce More Shows

Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo just announced some additional summer tour dates, including stops in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and sunny Baltimore, in between appearances at Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits, and, like, every single European festival. Are they going to continue wearing different outfits at every show? That's gonna get expensive.

Playing here, not elsewhere:

06-15 Oslo, Norway - Norwegian Wood Festival
06-16 Hultsfred, Sweden - Hultsfred Festival
06-17 Seinajoki, Finland - Tomava Island
06-21 Copenhagen, Denmark - Vega Musikkenshus
06-23 London, England - Hyde Park (Wireless Festival)
06-24 Leeds, England - Harewood House (Wireless Festival)
06-25 Scheessel, Germany - Hurricane Festival
06-27 Cologne, Germany - Live Music Hall
06-28 Munich, Germany - Eisehalle
06-30 Turin, Italy - Spaziale Festival
07-03 Paris, France - Le Bataclan
07-05 London, England - Carling Apollo Hammersmith
07-08 Brugge, Belgium - Cactus Festival
07-14 Rotterdam, Holland - North Sea Jazz Festival
07-18 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
07-19 San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore
07-20 Costa Mesa, CA - Pacific Amphitheatre
07-23 Los Angeles, CA - The Avalon
07-24 Los Angeles, CA - The Avalon
07-28 Yuzawa-machi, Japan - Naeba Ski Resort (Fuji Rock Festival)
08-05 Chicago, IL - Grant Park (Lollapalooza)
08-26 Liverpool, England - Creamfields Festival
09-03 Stradbally, Ireland - Stradbally Hall (Electric Picnic Festival)
09-09 Toronto, Ontario - Toronto Islands Park
09-15 Austin, TX - Austin City Limits Festival
09-23 Baltimore, MD - Pimlico Race Course

In the UK, where the "Crazy" single was so popular it was deleted after nine weeks at number one, Gnarls will unleash the single for "Smiley Faces" on July 17. On June 12, Gnarls Barkley bring their jams to "The Tonight Show." And you can watch their Star Wars-inspired performance on the MTV Movie Awards on reruns all weekend. Or you can watch this here clip of them doing "Crazy" on England's "Top of the Pops" in April. It rules.

Gnarls Barkley: "Crazy (Top of the Pops Version)"

!!! Launch Tour

Chk Chk Chk it out:

06-09 Washington, DC - Black Cat *#
06-10 Philadelphia, PA - Transit *
06-11 Brooklyn, NY - Northsix #%
06-30 Ipswich, England - Portman Road $
07-02 Coventry, England - Ricoh Arena $
07-03 Reading, England - Madejski Stadium $
07-05 Derby, England - Pride Park Stadium $
07-06 Sheffield, England - Don Valley Stadium $
07-07 Leeds, England - Cockpit
07-08 Balado, Scotland - T in the Park Festival
07-09 Dublin, Ireland - Oxegen Festival
07-11 Manchester, England - Evening News Arena $
07-12 Manchester, England - Evening News Areana $
07-13 Oxford, England - Zodiac
07-14 London, England - Earls Court $
07-15 London, England - Earls Court $
07-16 Reading, England - Glade Festival
07-17 London, England - Earls Court $
07-18 London, England - Earls Court $
07-21 Carhaix, France - Charrue Festival
08-10 Oslo, Norway - Oya Festival
08-12 Barcelona, Spain - Creamfields Festival
08-14 Aulnoye Aymeries, France - Les Nuites Secretes Festival
08-17 Portugal - Paredes Du Coura Festival
08-19 Brussels, Belgium - Pukkelpop Festival
08-20 Biddinghuizen, Belgium - Lowlands Festival
08-21 Brighton, England - Concorde II

* with Lansing-Dreiden
# with Mountain High
% with Professor Murder
$ with Red Hot Chili Peppers

As for the band's forthcoming third album, well, they're still working on it. According to their website, they're "hoping to have the LP finished in June." If it's any later than that, just blame Giuliani for the delay.

Exclusive: Akron/Family Reveal New Album

The album will feature songs mostly written on the road, "in the van the few weeks prior to the studio time, while we were all freezing in the wintery hinderlands of middle Canada, wheezing with bronchitis," according to Family man Seth Olinsky.

The Chicago location presented Akron/Family with the unique opportunity to collaborate with legendary free jazz percussionist Hamid Drake. Drake, said Olinsky, was "a total dream and pleasure" to work with in the studio, as he helped "bring the music to life." Charles Waters of the Gold Sparkle Band and William Parker's Little Huey Creative Orchestra also contributed saxophone and clarinet solos to the album.

The band aims to hold a record release party at the end of September at Tonic in New York City, followed by an appearance at the Pop Montreal Festival in, uh, Montreal, as well as a few other dates in Canada. A West Coast tour is on the agenda for December, as is the recording of yet another new album in October in November. As they say, the family that plays together, stays together.

Bob Mould's Blowoff Project Preps Debut

Blowoff has been blowing the roof off (sorry) the Washington, DC club scene for a few years, and now they're ready to expand their boundaries. On September 5, the duo's own Full Frequency Music label will release Blowoff's self-titled debut album. According to a press release, the album is "a total 50/50 collaboration" and a "merger between two independent-minded singer-songwriters that is equal parts "angry, angular power-pop" and "hazy house-fueled electronica."

Hey, sounds like 1997! You can hear for yourself at Blowoff's website, where new songs are currently streaming.

Tracklist:

01 Hormone Love
02 Here and Now
03 Overload
04 Saturday Night All the Time
05 Life With a View
06 Man Keeps Winning
07 Lemonade
08 Tag It
09 Fallout
10 Get Inside With Me
11 Beautiful
12 The Ballad of Mark Dirt

Blowoff have several DJ nights scheduled throughout the rest of the year, all taking place at their headquarters, Washington's 9:30 club.

06-10 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
09-16 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
10-14 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
11-11 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
12-16 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club

Mould will also embark on a short British tour later in June. Then he'll play a one-off date in Philadelphia in July. Random.

06-21 London, England - Wireless Festival
06-22 Birmingham, England - Academy 2
06-23 Manchester, England - Manchester Academy
06-24 Edinburgh, Scotland - Liquid Room
06-25 Leeds, England - Wireless Festival
07-16 Philadelphia, PA - Penn's Landing

Handsome Family Prepare for Last Days

The Sparks couple recorded the album at home, but thanks to the magic of email, Stephen Dorocke (Freakwater, Jesse Sykes) and David Coulter (Test Dept., The Pogues, Tom Waits) were able to contribute pedal steel and musical saw, respectively. In addition to the guest instrumentation and the Sparks' standard guitar, bass, and drums arrangements, Last Days of Wonder augments the Handsome Family sound with mellotron, ukulele, banjo, bowed wine glasses, and trombone sections, as well.

Last Days of Wonder:

01 Your Great Journey
02 Tesla's Hotel Room
03 These Golden Jewels
04 After We Shot the Grizzly
05 Flapping Your Broken Wings
06 Beautiful Women
07 All the Time in Airports
08 White Lights
09 Bowling Alley Bar
10 Hunter Green
11 Our Blue Sky
12 Somewhere Else to Be

In July, the Handsome Family heads out on the road with Meat Puppet Curt Kirkwood.

It's a family affair:

06-24 Albuquerque, NM - Launch Pad *
07-10 Minneapolis, MN - 400 Bar #
07-11 Milwaukee, WI - Shank Hall #
07-13 Chicago, IL - Abbey Pub #
07-14 Detroit, MI - Magic Stick #
07-15 Toronto, Ontario - Horseshoe Tavern #
07-18 Boston, MA - TT the Bear's #
07-20 New York, New York - Mercury Lounge #
07-21 Philadelphia, PA - World Café Live #
07-22 Arlington, VA - Iota #
07-23 Charlottesville, NC - Starr Hill Music Hall #
07-24 Carrboro, NC - Local 506 #
07-26 Atlanta, GA - The Earl #

* with Fast Heart Mart, Rivet Gang
# with Curt Kirkwood

Ted Leo Announces More Shows

Fans feeling the tyranny of distance between themselves and Ted can catch him at the following shows:

06-14 Philadelphia, PA - Trocadero *
07-08 Columbia, MD - Merriweather Post Pavilion !
07-28 Lansing, MI - Temple Club +$
07-29 Chicago, IL - Union Park (Pitchfork Music Festival) %
07-31 Indianapolis, IN - Emerson Theatre +^
08-01 Columbus, OH - Little Brothers +^
08-25 New York, NY - South Street Seaport (Seaport Music Festival) #
09-12 Memphis, TN - Hi Tone Café
09-13 New Orleans, LA - The Parish at House of Blues
09-15 Austin, TX - Zilker Park (Austin City Limits Festival)
09-16 Houston, TX - Walter's

* with Bouncing Souls, Mooney Suzuki, This Day and Age, Eugene Mirman
! with Belle & Sebastian, Broken Social Scene
+ with Jai-Alai Savant
$ with Thunderbirds Are Now!
% with Os Mutantes, Mission of Burma, Yo La Tengo, Spoon, Aesop Rock, Jens Lekman, the National, Danielson, Tapes 'n Tapes, Diplo, Dominik Eulberg, Glenn Kotche, Ada, Tarantula A.D., CSS, Bonde Do Role, Jeff Parker/Nels Cline Quartet
^ with Red Eyed Legends
# with DC Snipers

Fiery Furnaces Launch Tour Tonight

Like on their European tour in May, Eleanor and Matthew are joined by Bob D'Amico on drums and Jason Lowenstein (ex-Sebadoh) on bass and plan on playing "long sets" that cull from all of the band's albums, according to their website. Also, Matthew plans on playing guitar rather than piano.

"We don't like bands that attempt to replicate-- or accidentally replicate-- their records at their live shows," they say on their website. "And we feel well justified in this aversion to that sort of un-natural, un-necessary, mutant-izing or cloning." So don't go showing up at their gigs expecting some mutant cloning, OK? That's just not their scene.

On fire:

06-08 Detroit, MI - St. Andrew's Hall
06-09 Milwaukee, WI - The Rave
06-12 Vancouver, British Columbia - Richard's on Richards
06-13 Seattle, WA - Neumos
06-15 San Francisco, CA - Fillmore
06-15 San Francisco, CA - Amoeba Records (in-store)
06-16 Los Angeles, CA - Henry Fonda Theatre
06-16 Los Angeles, CA - Amoeba Records (in-store)
06-17 San Diego, CA - Epicentre
06-19 Salt Lake City, UT - In the Venue
06-20 Denver, CO - Bluebird Theatre
06-22 Omaha, NE - Sokol Auditorium
06-23 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue
06-24 Chicago, IL - Metro
06-25 Cincinnati, OH - Desdemona Festival
06-27 Philadelphia, PA - Theatre of Living Arts
06-29 New York, NY - Webster Hall
06-30 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
07-05 Auckland, New Zealand - 4:20
07-07 Melbourne, Australia - East Brunswick Club
07-08 Sydney, Australia - Gaelic Theatre
07-09 Brisbane, Australia - The Zoo
07-14 Ottawa, Ontario - Ottawa Blues Festival
07-15 Toronto, Ontario - Historic Fort York
07-17 Montreal, Quebec - Jacques Cartier Pier

Do you have a news tip for us? Anything crazy happen at a show you attended recently? Do you have inside info on the bands we cover? Is one of your favorite artists (that's not somebody you know personally) releasing a new record you'd like to see covered? You will remain completely anonymous, unless we are given your express permission to reveal your identity. (Please note that publicists, managers, booking agents, and other artist representatives are generally exempt from this rule, but will also be granted anonymity if requested.)